A world without Thomas (and other cartoons you keep from your kids)

I have mixed feelings about the mid-level editor who served as intership supervisor at my first newspaper job, a daily in San Luis Obispo. He turned out to be a bit of an ass as an employer — focused more on showing his frustration at my shortcomings than trying to help me get better. But he was also a pretty good parent to his young son. Fifteen years later, I remember some sage advice he offered about his 3-year-old’s obsession over “The Little Mermaid.”

pbskids.org

This kid needs to spend a few days with James Evans Sr. as a father.

“If he ever finds out that there’s a ‘Little Mermaid’ cartoon on TV,” he said. “My son is going to kill me in my sleep.”

As a parent of two young boys, I can totally relate. I’ve spent much of the last five years setting embargoes on an assortment of television shows, cartoon characters and other cultural touchstones –sometimes going to extremes to hide the existence of an annoying program or character from my sons. Barney the dinosaur? Never heard of him. Hey, let’s run in the kitchen and get a popsicle!

I make these decisions in large part because of the content and in small part because of the money involved. One reason we encouraged our kids to watch shows such as “Pingu,” “Shaun the Sheep” and “Kipper” was the lack of merchandising surrounding the programs. Even though the dogs in the latter show could be kind of annoying, there was never chance of walking by a “Kipper” superstore in the mall, or running into an entire aisle full of “Kipper” toys and accessories at Target.

Below are three cartoon characters I’m currently trying to hide from my kids, or have kept from them in the past. Yours in the comments …

Thomas the Tank Engine: I remember panicking a little bit when my toddler nephew got into Thomas, right around the time my first son was born. Looking at the exhaustive list of completely random accessories involved with this hobby, I imagined spending thousands of dollars on these creepy-faced trains, and vowed to live in a Thomas-free household. Almost five years later, my 2-year-old son is getting into train sets, but we started him off with a non-Thomas brand, and he’s getting the Thomas stuff for free from his cousin, who is 6 now and seems to enjoy passing the torch. But he’s still never seen a Thomas episode or video. Some day our youngest is going to find out there’s an entire television show based on this toy and realize I didn’t tell him about it. And then I’ll have to buy him a puppy …

dailymail.co.uk

We’re sitting this one out …

@#$%ing Caillou: I’m not sure if this is the real name of the show, but in our house it’s known to the adults as “@#$%ing Caillou.” We’ve covered this ground on The Poop before — about how Caillou’s enabling helicopter parents support the worldview that the Earth’s entire population must immediately stop what they’re doing and cater to Caillou’s every whim. I would rather pop some popcorn, dim the lights and watch the first three “Halloween” movies with my sons than expose them to even a half hour of Caillou’s little entitlement whinefest. I often think how great it would be to see Caillou’s family go on “Wife Swap” with the Evans clan from “Good Times,” when John Amos was still with the show. I’d drop $59.99 on a pay-per-view to watch that.

In any case, I always skip over the PBS channels when I’m flipping around — even at night when “Masterpiece Theater” is on. I don’t want to risk my children viewing even a single two-second image of “@#$%ing Caillou” and wanting to see more.

Mickey Mouse: I’m actually a big Walt Disney fan, and have huge respect for his contributions to animation, moviemaking and family entertainment. But in the years before my son was born I thought the Disney company had become almost predatory in its efforts to maximize profits while paying little attention to quality and the innovative principles that built the company. There are few places that raise my blood pressure more than a Disney Store.

My diligence in sheltering my 4-year-old son from non-Pixar Disney products reached an almost comic level last year, when I took him to Disneyland for the first time. On the plane, at the hotel and on the way to the park, people wearing Mickey Mouse clothing kept asking him Disney-specific questions. “Are you excited to see Donald Duck?”“Are you going to meet Goofy?” He had never heard of these characters, responding with a confused “Who?” We wouldn’t have received bigger looks of pity if I brought my son to the happiest place on Earth wearing a burlap sack.

I’ve since loosened up on the Disney embargo, after having a great time at Disneyland and feeling better about the direction of Disney animation. But I don’t regret the decision to keep Disney from my son for most of the first four years of his life. He may some day rebel by putting Minnie Mouse wallpaper in his dorm room. But at least I’ll never have to see it in our house.

What do you keep from your kids?

PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder of this parenting blog, which admittedly sometimes has nothing to do with parenting. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhartlaub.